Optical physical media dependent (“PMD”) integrated circuits (“ICs”) (“PMD ICs”) are designed to operate in conjunction with photonic devices such as lasers and photodiodes/photo-detectors. These circuits are the interface between electrical and optical domains. During functional and/or qualification testing, e.g., high-temperature operational life (“HTOL”), it is desirable for the PMD ICs to be dynamically operating and realistically loaded. As the operation data rate increases, such loading conditions become either cost-prohibitive or unattainably complex. Many existing approaches trade off test relevance with less than ideal load conditions and/or suffer from wider variation range in results due to test system complexity.